Musca domestica culture?
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Termite48
Well-known member
To feed the houseflies in order to make them good for your mantis, I recommend a prepared fly food containing bee pollen. It is available from a few vendors.
In the absence of such a prepared food, you might use a slightly watered down honey drip to make them feed and gut load to the advantage of the mantids you are raising and to keep the flies alive for that purpose. If you are wanting to know what to do about culturing them to get your own larvae and then pupae, for feeding as adults, you need to check the various threads that exist here on the Forum about that subject.
Rich
In the absence of such a prepared food, you might use a slightly watered down honey drip to make them feed and gut load to the advantage of the mantids you are raising and to keep the flies alive for that purpose. If you are wanting to know what to do about culturing them to get your own larvae and then pupae, for feeding as adults, you need to check the various threads that exist here on the Forum about that subject.
Rich
petoly
Well-known member
If you are looking to culture them, put the pupae in a 5 gallon bucket, get a panty hose and wrap it to the top of the bucket. Cut one of the legs to a little nub, and tie a knot on it tightly, cut the other leg so its like a sleeve. This is your entry point to do maintenance on your culture. Twist this sleeve and use a clothes clip to keep it shut. This works better than tying a loose knot. Put a bungee chord around the edge of the bucket where the panty hose it, this prevents it from comng off the nucket when u r doing maintenance, therefore u wont lose flies. In the bucket put the container with the pupae mixed with wood chips, another container with either water crystals or water and wood chips. The chips prevent the flies from drowning. and another container with the pollen mix ( yens blend is great sold by rebecca at mantisplace.com ), or the honey. This is food for the flies. Now for the egg laying medium. They want something kind f stinky. There are two methods that i have heard of, one is using sour milk and soaking a rag in it. Keep it in for 12 to 18 hours, then remove and put in a jar to incubate. The maggots will hatch in 24 hours and eat the sour milk. You might have to spray the cultures to keep consistent moisture, but not too much! Or it will kill them. Eventuall the maggots will start rising to the top and harden into pupae, take them out and put them in another cntainer with flour and wood chops. The flour is to remove the excess moisture, at this point u can either sell the pupae, or let them hatch to replace deaths in the breeding colony. Rinse and repeat. The othe culture medium i heard is to mix dry dog food with a little bit of water, nuke it and mix it so it has a mushy but dry consistency, not too moist, put that in the cintainer, and the flies will lay eggs in it. This is less smelly than sour milk. U can put the dog food in a culTure container, so when u take it out of the fly colony, all u gotta do is add some excelsior or cardboard, and the lid, and the culture is ready to incubate.
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Termite48
Well-known member
I have a monarch net cage of the medium size. In it I have 50-60 blue bottle flies. After they have fed on the pollen mixture that Mantisplace sells, for a few days, I place a 16 oz. container on the bottom with the medium made of really soured milk (to the point of looking like yogurt) with some of Carey Kurtz's BB medium mix, a couple of table spoons of beer, and a tablespoon of monkey chow. This is made into a pasty mixture and covered over with a leaf of romaine lettuce which keeps in the moisture. Within five minutes today there were two dozen of the flies in the container and checking it out. Some just sit and think about it, and others go under the lettuce and fool around in the media. This is my first time doing it this way. Others that have had some experience can add to this thread.
Cool, thanks for the advice guys I will have to try and set something up soon. I might wait until I get another culture but if these guys will eat honey & pollen if I can get some that is good news.
petoly
Well-known member
yeah dude like Rich S said, Rebecca at mantis place sells Yen's blend which is a mix of honey and pollen in a powder, if you can find that stuff in australia you can probably make your own.
petoly
Well-known member
well you only need a small amount to coat the flies in, so it will last a long time, it's also good to put a teaspoon in fruit fly medium for them as well. 100 grams should last you months I believe. depending obviously on how many mantids you have but it should go a long way.
whatislove
Well-known member
I hope you're pupae hatch!
I bought 5 fresh batches from different retailers all had them in the same conditions and only 2 hatched completely, 2 others just sat there and rotted and the other had 2 flies hatch out of over 200 pupae lol.
Apparently alot of the pupae that you can buy in my area turn out to be duds (like near 50% failure rate), Makes it very hard for me to keep violin's which I had to decline for this reason!
I bought 5 fresh batches from different retailers all had them in the same conditions and only 2 hatched completely, 2 others just sat there and rotted and the other had 2 flies hatch out of over 200 pupae lol.
Apparently alot of the pupae that you can buy in my area turn out to be duds (like near 50% failure rate), Makes it very hard for me to keep violin's which I had to decline for this reason!
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Mvalenz
Well-known member
Maybon, do you have a link from where you got these flightless house flies?
I got them from my local fish shop (I have been going there regularly for pet supplies for a while now and know the girls who run it).
The brand of the flies however is from pisces enterprises here is a link to their website:
http://www.piscesenterprises.com/
But I am fairly sure they do not sell things to members of the public only to a business (perhaps someone with a business you know can get you some and give them / send them to you).
P.S I was scanning through the website and it went down for maintenance (link is not dead just down for a moment, check back soon if it doesn't work close to when I posted this).
